Food inflation, local trend or worldwide?

[Explant]

@izzy

Yesterday i bought bananas for 9nt per jin.
i asked the vendor how come its so cheap (its one third of the price last week) and he said its sonce these cant be exported.
A few questions came to mind :

1. if i buy at 9nt/jin retail, how much is the farmer getting ? prob not enough to cover their costs.
2. banans ranged between 20 to 30 nt this summer, are the markups really that huge?

This has often been the case in Taiwan. Usually it is due to either copy cat syndrome or due to either China trying to sabotage Taiwan, or Taiwans government previous sellouts to china coming back to bite us in the ass.

Basically, to answer your questions. yes, lack of export creates a rock bottom price. No, farmers are not getting a fair price. They never were before either, it is just worse now. Middlemen and retail outlets get all the real profits with almost no risk.

This is why sometimes you see certain juices hit the shelves at 711 cheap. right now it is lemon, guava and somewhat passion fruit. you can see the cartons for cheap (remembering after % and shelving fees/promotions etc rt marts, 7s etc probably take 50~60% off the retail price. then the logistics and costs of the producer (hence low % real juices with added sugar usually).

I know a lot of guava farmers that have just stopped going to the farms now. in the last 2 years we have seen farm wholesale prices hit 5nt/kg (not tai jin) if papaya, banana, guava and lemon. Pineapple would of too if japan and other countries didn’t help the government find a sollution for that round of Chinese economic warfare.

Sometimes farmers actually lose money.

You still see lots because some farms are contract farms. which means 2 important things: They have a contractual agreement to supply a certain quantity in certain times; and, they usually have a minimum price guarantee. which is often very shitty, but better than losing money.

Big scale farms like Taiphone and such are a different ballgame with different rules.

Edit for markups.

imagine this scenario as a rough guide.

Farmer sells for 10nt/kg. You fit 5~20kg per box (varies greatly by crop). box costs 10nt. trucking from south to north warehouses/wholesalers are usually in the 20~30nt/box range. Let’s low ball it and call shipping 30nt for 10kg. that’s 3nt/kg just to ship.

Labour low ball is 1200/8hour day. legally 1300 is minimum. you need to pay people to harvest, grade, clean and pack each box. Or just sell it cheaper to a local distributor with a setup in place with refrigeration etc. common nation wide.

This completely ignores the cost of trees/seeds, land prep, pipes (double now from last year), fertilizers, death sprays etc and all that labor too.

And people still throw away food. this is why over various threads I repeat: Food is too cheap!

[slawa]

1.5L sparkling water 52€

[Belgian_Pie]

@izzy

i asked the vendor how come its so cheap (its one third of the price last week) and he said its sonce these cant be exported.

And no typhoon to speak of.

[Belgian_Pie]

@slawa

1.5L sparkling water 52€

That’s the new trend, ‘water’ bars.

Yes, The Water Bar Is Real, And It Might Just Be The Beginning Of The Luxury...

[BigDave]

I prefer water from Peckham Springs.

How much was that water last year?

[HenHaoChi]

I buy most of my food from local wet markets. I haven’t noticed a huge difference in price in the years I’ve been here. I think choy sum has gone from 20 to 30TWD per bunch. Definitely a rise, but not as much as the UK. Sometimes supermarkets will artificially raise prices, but wet markets will stay more consistent. IMO some supply chain shortages are real… others are faked for political/social control reasons.

I started cooking at home, because it’s better value and healthier. My main staple is black rice and choy sum.

Prep doesn’t take too long. I just cut up a load of vegetables, and stick them in with the black rice. Sometimes I go to work and leave it cooking… I come back home and find (hopefully) a perfectly cooked dish, which lasts for two large meals.

If I ate meat on a budget, I’d eat braising steak, duck liver and chicken feet/wings etc.

Too many 60TWD lunchboxes made me dog sick in 2014. I prefer to control what I cook.

[chilifries]

The latest news from Parksville, BC

[KHHville]

Plan accordingly:

The following is a list of 33 things we know about the coming food shortages…

#1 The hard red winter wheat crop in the United States this year “was the smallest since 1963”. But in 1963, there were only 182 million people living in this nation. Today, our population has grown to 329 million.
#2 It is being projected that the rice harvest in California will be “half what it would be in a normal year”.
#3 The U.S. tomato harvest will come in at just 10.5 million tons in 2022. That is over a million tons lower than a normal year.
#4 This will be the worst U.S. corn harvest in at least a decade.
#5 Year-to-date shipments of carrots in the United States are down 45 percent.
#6 Year-to-date shipments of sweet corn in the United States are down 20 percent.
#7 Year-to-date shipments of sweet potatoes in the United States are down 13 percent.
#8 Year-to-date shipments of celery in the United States are down 11 percent.
#9 Total peach production in the U.S. is down 15 percent from last year.
#10 Almost three-fourths of all U.S. farmers say that this year’s drought is hurting their harvests.
#11 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Oregon is down 41 percent.
#12 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in New Mexico is down 43 percent.
#13 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Texas is down 50 percent.
#14 One beef producer in Oklahoma is now predicting that ground beef “could eventually top $50 per pound”.
#15 At least 40 percent of the United States has been suffering from drought conditions for 101 consecutive weeks.
#16 Overall, this is the worst multi-year megadrought in the United States in 1,200 years.
#17 Europe is currently experiencing the worst drought that it has seen in 500 years. In some parts of central Europe, river levels have fallen so low that “hunger stones” are being revealed for the first time in centuries.
#18 Corn production for the entire EU could be down by as much as one-fifth in 2022.
#19 We are being warned that there will be crop losses in France of up to 35 percent.
#20 It is being projected that crop losses in some areas of the UK could be as high as 50 percent.
#21 It is being reported that there will be crop losses “of up to 50 percent” in some parts of Germany.
#22 Some farmers in Italy have already lost “up to 80% of their harvest”.
#23 Agricultural production in Somalia will be down about 80 percent this year.
#24 In eastern Africa, the endless drought has already resulted in the deaths of at least seven million animals.
#25 In China, they are facing the worst drought that they have ever experienced in recorded history.
#26 India normally accounts for 40 percent of the global rice trade, but we are being warned that production in that country will be way down in 2022 due to “considerable rainfall deficits in key rice producing states”.
#27 A third of the entire nation of Pakistan was under water after recent floods absolutely devastated that nation, and agricultural areas were hit particularly hard. As a result, the vast majority of the crops in the country have been “washed away”…

It has also been estimated that roughly 65 per cent of the country’s food basket — particularly crops like rice, cotton, wheat and onion — have been washed away.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in an interview to CGTN earlier this week, offered an even starker outlook by saying that “about 80 to 90 per cent” of the country’s crops have been damaged by the floods.

#28 The prices of some fertilizers have tripled since 2021, while the prices of some other fertilizers have actually quadrupled.
#29 One payment company is reporting that the number of Americans using their app to take out short-term loans for groceries has risen by 95 percent.
#30 Demand at U.S. food banks is now even worse than it was during the height of the COVID pandemic.
#31 The World Health Organization is telling us that millions of people in Africa are now potentially facing a very real possibility of starving to death.
#32 According to the World Food Program, 828 million people around the world go to bed hungry each night. Needless to say, that number will soon be much higher.
#33 UN Secretary General António Guterres has publicly stated that he believes that it is likely that there will be “multiple famines” in 2023.

[Explant]

@Belgian_Pie

@slawa

1.5L sparkling water 52€

That’s the new trend, ‘water’ bars.

https://dcist.com/story/19/07/01/yes-the-water-bar-is-real-and-it-might-just-be-the-beginning-of-the-luxury-water-wave-in-d-c/

This should be the writing on the wall. Same with food. eventually “naturally grown” foods will be the niche. Time will tell if people are into this, but it seems a bad idea currently due to the risk of monopolies on food security. imagine a cell phone/computer/car type situation with food in the coming decades. scary!

[Explant]

@KHHville

Plan accordingly:

The following is a list of 33 things we know about the coming food shortages…

#1 The hard red winter wheat crop in the United States this year “was the smallest since 1963”. But in 1963, there were only 182 million people living in this nation. Today, our population has grown to 329 million.
#2 It is being projected that the rice harvest in California will be “half what it would be in a normal year”.
#3 The U.S. tomato harvest will come in at just 10.5 million tons in 2022. That is over a million tons lower than a normal year.
#4 This will be the worst U.S. corn harvest in at least a decade.
#5 Year-to-date shipments of carrots in the United States are down 45 percent.
#6 Year-to-date shipments of sweet corn in the United States are down 20 percent.
#7 Year-to-date shipments of sweet potatoes in the United States are down 13 percent.
#8 Year-to-date shipments of celery in the United States are down 11 percent.
#9 Total peach production in the U.S. is down 15 percent from last year.
#10 Almost three-fourths of all U.S. farmers say that this year’s drought is hurting their harvests.
#11 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Oregon is down 41 percent.
#12 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in New Mexico is down 43 percent.
#13 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Texas is down 50 percent.
#14 One beef producer in Oklahoma is now predicting that ground beef “could eventually top $50 per pound”.
#15 At least 40 percent of the United States has been suffering from drought conditions for 101 consecutive weeks.
#16 Overall, this is the worst multi-year megadrought in the United States in 1,200 years.
#17 Europe is currently experiencing the worst drought that it has seen in 500 years. In some parts of central Europe, river levels have fallen so low that “hunger stones” are being revealed for the first time in centuries.
#18 Corn production for the entire EU could be down by as much as one-fifth in 2022.
#19 We are being warned that there will be crop losses in France of up to 35 percent.
#20 It is being projected that crop losses in some areas of the UK could be as high as 50 percent.
#21 It is being reported that there will be crop losses “of up to 50 percent” in some parts of Germany.
#22 Some farmers in Italy have already lost “up to 80% of their harvest”.
#23 Agricultural production in Somalia will be down about 80 percent this year.
#24 In eastern Africa, the endless drought has already resulted in the deaths of at least seven million animals.
#25 In China, they are facing the worst drought that they have ever experienced in recorded history.
#26 India normally accounts for 40 percent of the global rice trade, but we are being warned that production in that country will be way down in 2022 due to “considerable rainfall deficits in key rice producing states”.
#27 A third of the entire nation of Pakistan was under water after recent floods absolutely devastated that nation, and agricultural areas were hit particularly hard. As a result, the vast majority of the crops in the country have been “washed away”…

It has also been estimated that roughly 65 per cent of the country’s food basket — particularly crops like rice, cotton, wheat and onion — have been washed away.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in an interview to CGTN earlier this week, offered an even starker outlook by saying that “about 80 to 90 per cent” of the country’s crops have been damaged by the floods.

#28 The prices of some fertilizers have tripled since 2021, while the prices of some other fertilizers have actually quadrupled.
#29 One payment company is reporting that the number of Americans using their app to take out short-term loans for groceries has risen by 95 percent.
#30 Demand at U.S. food banks is now even worse than it was during the height of the COVID pandemic.
#31 The World Health Organization is telling us that millions of people in Africa are now potentially facing a very real possibility of starving to death.
#32 According to the World Food Program, 828 million people around the world go to bed hungry each night. Needless to say, that number will soon be much higher.
#33 UN Secretary General António Guterres has publicly stated that he believes that it is likely that there will be “multiple famines” in 2023.

interestingly, so many people call preparing based on reality paranoid, prepping, hoarding or some other catch phrase.

People really should be including personal responsibility into their prepping. dont waste food, materials etc. imagine our power security bump if we stopped air conditioning the streets along every street in every shopping district nationwide. as an easy example.

Have land, grow food. not from fear, but for health and financial reasons.

[marasan]

Taiwan dumpling chain Din Tai Fung to raise prices next week | Taiwan News |...

[dan2006]

Although if one is going to Din Tai Fung for dumplings, you generally have no problems taking a 4% increase

[marasan]

@dan2006

Although if one is going to Din Tai Fung for dumplings, you generally have no problems taking a 4% increase

That’s definitely true. When we go, it’s for brunch usually and we spend a good amount for a family of four (about what we would spend on a dinner). I still find it interesting that they are raising prices because I wonder if this and other price increases are the start of inflation here in Taiwan, I mean the kind of inflation that has been occurring in other countries.

[Explant]

It has been happening here in Taiwan for many years. we just dont notice it because the price tag remained the same, but the ingredients were changing

[KHHville]

Yep. Volume inflation been ongoing in carton drinks. Used to be able to get 500cc of Uni-President papaya milk (or other brand or other milk flavors) in convenience store. Now it’s down to 400cc or even under 400cc, and at a higher price.

[Explant]

The potato chip cartels have been doing this for ages It’s almost like these companies think us consumers are completely without brain, the wankers.

[finley]

@Explant

The potato chip cartels have been doing this for ages It’s almost like these companies think us consumers are completely without brain, the wankers.

Since people are still buying potato chips for ridiculous prices, they might be onto something

Last time I was in the UK, a packet of crisps was somewhere around £1 in most places (although you might get them a bit cheaper in the supermarkets). That’s £25 pounds per kilo. For fried potatoes. Roughly the same price as pastured beef (depending on cut, obviously).

[Explant]

@finley

@Explant

The potato chip cartels have been doing this for ages It’s almost like these companies think us consumers are completely without brain, the wankers.

Since people are still buying potato chips for ridiculous prices, they might be onto something

Last time I was in the UK, a packet of crisps was somewhere around £1 in most places (although you might get them a bit cheaper in the supermarkets). That’s £25 pounds per kilo. For fried potatoes. Roughly the same price as pastured beef (depending on cut, obviously).

• half a kilo of plastic and probably 5 kilos of fossil fuels.

it’s a retarded world we live in. It could be done so much easier, cheaper and more efficiently if we weren’t so addicted to assuming the other side is retarded. And not proving the other side right

[Belgian_Pie]

Now they ‘hand fry’ potato chips. Not the huge industrial fryers any more. Human labor! Some are even ‘oven baked’.

[Explant]

teehee. ok. seen the factories? true there are humans monitoring, but it is hugely automated with some human based loading/recieving and whatnot. doesnt justify a 1/3 filled bag when people are saying we are on the right track with banning straws.

it’s a farce.